About Me

I believed that stuff we were taught in high school back in the days before "Social Studies" supplanted history, geography and civics.
I really don't want to talk only about political things. I really want merely to be left alone to follow my own way.

Log

Monday, October 27, 2008

How can you defend and preserve it if you think it is fundamentally flawed?

Today the talk shows are all talking about his redistribution of wealth views. They miss something more basic. Obama thinks the Constitution is flawed because it is all "negative rights." It wastes too much time on nots. "The states shall not ..." "The Government shall make no ..." Silly trivial stuff like that that get in the way of the Government's real purpose. This takes too much away from what Mr. Obama believes the Government's real purpose is -- taking from those who receive too much benefit from their efforts and giving it to those who only do the minimum necessary.

The Freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution should have been Roosevelt's "Freedom from Want". "Freedom of Speech". Freedom of Religion." and "Freedom from Fear". Well, at least the first one. The other three? Well, Freedom of speech interferes with our plan. Only superstitious bigots still cling to their bibles (and guns). And freedom from fear? You have nothing to fear as long as you do what we tell you.

No, Mr. Obama you are supposed to swear to preserve, protect, and defend this Constitution, not the one you wish it was, Even if you don't understand why the founding fathers designed it this way.

Friday, October 24, 2008

Or just very confident? The Democrat Leadership has a plan to take away the tax advantage on 401-K plans and replace it with a mandatory 5% contribution to a new government plan. It would then pay $600 per year back at retirement, according to Workforce Management, a non-political trade publication. For the mathematically impaired, six hundred dollars is five per cent of twelve thousand dollars. So you will get out less than you pay in if you earn more than $12,001. A fifty thousand dollar income will be required to pay $2500 per year into the fund - to get $600 back at retirement.

To add insult to injury, You pay in over approximately a forty-five year working life and take it back out over whatever is left of your life. Forty-five working years times $600 is $27,000! Sounds good to someone earning $12,000 per year. But of course, he will actually be losing money. From 65, forty-five years is 110. You would have to collect until age 110 just to break even on the $12,000 income.

Sounds like a great deal to me ... NOT. I can't believe they telegraphed their intentions before the elections. I guess they have confidence that Democrat voters can't do math.

Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it. An empty homily? It seems that every Communist takeover begins with mass killing. Somehow the visage of Che Guevara became the hero of college students everywhere, despite having been the killing arm of Castro's revolution, killing tens of thousands of the college educated and professional classes in the Havana Soccer Stadium in the months after Castro's takeover. Then there were the Killing Fields of Cambodia where the children killed the adults by the hundreds of thousands. But this is about the Duc d'Orleans, and the French Revolution.

Our students do not learn the fate of Citizen Equality in schools They don't even learn American history, much less French. We must remember the fate of Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orléans. The Duke fancied himself a revolutionary too. He allowed the Commitee to use his chateau to plan the Revolution. He wined and dined them and supported the cause. He wrote, printed, and distributed their revolutionary pamphlets. One might even suppose that then as now, a rally was a good place to pick women of questionable virtue. He truly believed he was one of them. He was the epitome of the eighteenth Century version of "Cool".He was indeed their best friend in the French Court. At the time he was even called the Father of the Revolution. If he had been in America now, he would vote for Obama.When I first read of him in the Smithsonian magazine about thirty years ago, he seemed so familiar that I wondered if a coach had ever driven off the drawbridge into his moat drowning a young courtesan. But despite all that, once the blood lust of the Terror had begun, all that was forgotten. He was after all, a Bourbon, a member of the rich elite and had to go. On 6 November1793, he had his date with Madame Guillotine.

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

If you are approaching retirement, like me, thank an Obama supporter for what they are about to provide you. Seriously, walk right up to one - especially one who is more "fortunate" than most and say "Thank you for the extra taxes you are about to pay. I promise to spend it wisely". Who knows, they just may figure it out.

Friday, October 17, 2008

Last time, I wrote of my surprise at a Jewish person's pro-Obama bumper sticker in Hebrew. I didn't understand how someone could vote against themselves. I since read that the Jewish people were very enthusiastic supporters of Mr. Hitler's national socialism before the rabid antisemitism came out.

Now I have been noticing a phenomenom. I noticed it before, but didn't pay attention. Big fancy houses and cars with Obama signs and bumper stickers. Now the cars I can be a little more lenient with. You can have an $80 thousand dollar car without a $250 thousand dollar income. Truly, most of the extremely wealthy people I ever know drove more modest cars that I. (Perhaps how the got wealthy?)So maybe that new shiny convertible with the Obama sticker was financed to the hilt and behind a payment. Who knows? This is but one story:There is a house up the mountain road about five miles, five twisty turny climbing miles, behind Boulder. The house can only be described as a mansion. 150 yards or more off the road in a relatively flat meadow, it was a new very large and expensive place. His fancy car is too big to be hybrid. An income of two hundred and fifty thousand a year would not begin to pay for this house and cars. But there it was - the big red O with Biden too. Now Boulder is not a Conservative place so it was no surprise that all the fancy homes in town had the O signs. This one was different. He will not be able to keep his pretty house on the hill. (wasn't all that pretty truthfully - looked garishly immodest and out-of-place like Chateau Elan) The owner of this home is actively campaigning to make himself have more taxes and less gasoline. But I had to wonder why it is that people with the target on their back would support someone who put it there? How does he think he can escape the consequences of his actions?

Monday, October 13, 2008

This morning I saw the strangest thing. I saw a Barak Obama bumper sticker written entirely in Hebrew. How very strange. If the Jewish people are as much for Obama as the polls make it seem, why?

Over my lifetime, at the behest of the American Jewish Community, the American Government has sent billions of dollars in military and civilian aid to Israel. Many people have died in the support of the mere existence of American support for Israel. Now they are going to yank the carpet out from under Israel and realign our entire position in the Middle East. No, it is not because of Obama's middle name or anything silly like that. It is simply the Democrat position on our involvement in Mid-Eastern affairs.

So the Christians support the Zionists, but the Jews do not. What a strange world.

So you know those parting words from the Passover Seder "Le-shanah ha-ba-a b'Yerushalayim"? They left off some words: Next year in Jerusalem, there will be only Muslims.

Sunday, October 12, 2008

For the last couple of weeks, I have been losing about $1700 a day from my savings. I don't know where the bottom is, but I am still betting that it will come back ... some day.

Early this year, in February, I went to visit my broker. I had the idea to put an order to liquidate my holdings should Obama win. His response was "You're too late". People are already doing that. Then he said "Watch. As we get closer to the election and the more it looks like Obama will win, the lower the market will go. Buy then."

His change includes increasing taxation on capital gains. Get those nasty filty rich people. Oh, wait,that's me (and anyone else that actually gets up in the morning and goes to work. $250,000? Yeah right). So people are trying to get out of their holdings now - ahead of the rush. Talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I may live to regret this, but I am digging in. I am still dollar cost averaging and this is where that is supposed to be good. More shares for the same money.

My biggest position is a couple hundred shares each of Altria and Phillip Morris International. I know that the Democrats and their lawyers will try to cut open the goose that lays those golden eggs. But I am hoping that our lawyers can beat their lawyers. Or at least that the Democrat Congressmen are as easily bribable when they are in power as they have been previously.

Just know that you will never hear this on CNN or even CNBC. But your broker knows. I know, anecdotal evidence - But, which do you actually get to see? The anecdotal or the statistical?

In an earlier incarnation of my life, I worked for a PBS television station¹. Politically it was somewhat left of center. I guess I was too, just not as much.

At that time there was this quirky little law called the Fairness Doctrine. The idea was that since there was only so much electromagnetic spectrum and it was the assignment of a public asset that it should not favor any one point of view - on anything. Should you have a panel where one doctor favors hysterectomies for uterine prolapse, equal time must me made for anyone with an opposing idea from the rational (ligature) to the irrational (you don't want to know). It was not merely political. And it was enforced by a barrage of litigation or threats of litigation. The lawyers loved it like sharks love seals.

The effect was obvious and intuitive. Nothing controversial would be broadcast. The stations protected themselves. It made for the most boring TV and radio ever.

The criteria that rationally causes the dominance of talk radio being Conservative are content, entertainment, and interest. Air America and the other Liberal talk radio outlets never understood that. That's why it died. Obviously, the first consideration is that people want to have their own ideas reinforced. But if the population is within a few points of being equally balanced, why aren't their equal numbers of talk shows being listened to by equal numbers of people? Hint - it is not because the media corporations restrict thought or the TV programs would be conservative too. Many times I tried to listen to Air America. I wanted to know what they think and I wanted to get perspective. But in every single case, I had to give up. The hosts were not just uninteresting, they were venomous. The hostility they projected was so strong that there was no hope of any of them ever convincing anyone of anything other than that they did not like {Bush|Capitalism|Christianity|Rush Limbaugh}², not even why they didn't like it. Such anger does not make good listening. Rush on the other hand says his point with disarming charm and a smile. He is a joy to listen to even when I disagree with him. That is typical of the Libertarian and Conservative hosts. Had the Liberals adopted that stance the fairness doctrine would not be necessary. All I can gather from it is that apparently Liberalism is so hostile at its core that they can not deliver it in a friendly way.

Get ready, the Fairness Doctrine coming back. Nancy Pelosi says it will be. It will not be a matching of ideas. It will be the absence of critical thought. If a radio station plays something from The Dead Kennedys, will it have to play Anthem by Rush?

¹ CPB they called it then. Corporation for Public Broadcasting.² A computer convention meaning one of a set of choices.

Yesterday I went for a drive by myself and searched the Saturday afternoon radio for some intelligent conversation. I am not into college football. Whole sections of XM radio were off the air for "reprogramming". And local FM playlists bore me. Finally I fell upon Mike McConnel. In general I like his voice and style. He did his job he got me thinking. Spectrum-wise, I would say he is slightly right of center - like me - a logical libertarian. He strikes me as a talk-show host who I would agree with and listen to.But he had a position that bothered me. He feels that we anti-Obama* voters have hijacked the Republican Party - not for good end. HE referred to us as "hillbillies, not necessarily from the hills". His position is that we already know all we need to or are going to about Obama. And that we should let it drop, and concentrate on Democrat vs. Republican policy.

But where is it written that it is an either or thing?

The search for the real Obama is not really a search. It is a proclamation. Things are not what they seem. When even John McCain tells us an obvious untruth "I have to tell you he is a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of as president of the United States", we are confused. We are certain of nothing because the things we see and hear do not add up.

We are being called paranoid, but even a stopped clock is right twice a day. We do have something to worry about. Is he the Manchurian candidate?

I have seen nothing that makes me believe that Obama's associations were bad judgment. I believe they were and are conscious decisions not made in a vacuum. They are who he is. His call for unspecified change is still unenumerated after all this time. And I do not believe Obama's lack of candor even in things as trivial as his birth is coincidental. He is withholding what he does not want us to see. McConnel says "two biographies and you say you do not know him?" I reply YES! I have only seen what he wants me to see and no more.

And now McCain's comments at his own rally make me wonder if he is part of the conspiracy too. He is the most liberal of Republican Senators. Does he really want to win to keep this a country of sovereign individuals or just to win (since both he and Obama would see this as a country where the people are assets of the government)? Does he (McCain)have the same goal of changing this to a Socialist Country? Would they both have their fingers crossed when they swear to uphold the Constitution?

We are about to send to Washington the most Liberal President ever. We are going to equip him with a veto-proof House of Representatives, not that that matters in his case; a filibuster-proof Senate and at least one Justice of the Supreme Court. Isn't is right that we should be concerned about who he is as much as what he says he is?

Saturday, October 11, 2008

"Most of us did not want McCain in the primaries, but after all that factionalism and an unhealthy amount of cross party voting, that is what we were left with -- the most Liberal/Socialist Republican possible."*

The only thing left to say is "At least he is better than Obama."

Maybe after Obama's damage to our country, the Republicans might get together an nominate someone of principle. Sarah Palin, maybe?

I feel sorry for my children - they do not realize that this election of Obama is going to place a tremendous burden on them. Not so much on me, I'm old and soon to throw down the yoke of slavery to the Government and the people it represents. My children will work to pay the tab.

I am entirely too political and too worried about the future. It permeates everything now.

It was just a comment of Flickr, a photo blog. Someone had posted a parody of an Obama poster. A pleasant and well meaning young man in Germany expressed his feelings:

"It will be indeed a very interesting election. Here in Germany Senator Obama is very popular. In my opinion Senator McCain is too old to become the next President of the United States. But I respect other opinions ! "

My response belonged more over here than over there, so I thought I would share it with you:

Straight forward - We have lived all our lives over here in the equivalent of West Germany . This election is the choice between that old guy or becoming East Germany. That old guy is all that stands between us and Communism. It is that bad.Most of us did not want McCain in the primaries, but after all that factionalism and an unhealthy amount of cross party voting, that is what we got -- the most Liberal/Socialist Republican possible.Obama has the press and media solidly behind him, so the news varies from slanted to dishonest. So his Marxist connections are buried by all but talk radio which WILL be outlawed (fairness doctrine) after the election and the internet. What will that become afterwards? Like the Chinese?We are accused of being "racist" is we do not wish to embrace his "Change". But I am just not ready to live in East Germany.

My younger daughter appeared at my desk last evening wanting to "borrow" twenty dollars from me to give to one of our "poor" neighbors. For starters, that is a very extended family - recently widowed 45ish 300 pound mother with a 28 year old 300 pound daughter and her inter-racial boyfriend, a 27 year old son and his girlfriend and two little children, an eighteen-year-old son, and a 13 and a twelve. Oh yes, and (now down to) five medium-large (think boxer) dogs. All in a two bedroom house. Not an employed person in the entire bunch.

"Does she smoke?""Yes"."Does she drink?""Yes"."Does she do drugs?""Yes"."No".

But my daughter is a touch. Her heart bleeds for people in need. Dad, it's for the children. Now you and I know better, but her heart is still filled with the exuberance and optimism of youth. I suggested that if the situation is that dire, perhaps we should call DFACS to rescue the children. So she got mad at her mean old dad and stormed off.

She came back later tail between her legs muttering something about why did Dad always have to be right.

What she does not realize is that what will benefit the children is not enabling the parent's bad behavior, but making them confront it and improve the entire situation and that her well-meaning interference will in the long run make things worse.

This apochraphyl incident is as well an analogy to out entire country and its situation.

There was a song by the Velvet Underground and Nico in the seventies, a real Lou Reed sub-culture description piece called I'm Waiting For My Man in which he describes a junkie's life. The line the hooked my memory was "The first thing that you learn is you always must wait." Trying to remember how I got to this ear worm, I know I was thinking about what changes we really will have after next month as we enter into the epoch of Obama. And I thought of every contact I have ever had with any branch of Government and at any level of Government. The first thing that you learn is you always must wait. There is no competition so there is no customer service. Post Office? Unemployment Office? VA Hospital? (Or County owned for that matter) Driver's License Office?So as 51% of our population of deliberately dumbed down Americans deliberately aduterated with only the lowest class of illegal immigrants hands everything in our lives over to the Government to run for us(?), contemplate the Government's efficiency and remember.

So what has America become? A land of Government hand-out junkies; so,

Thursday, October 9, 2008

By titling this blog with that full name, I understand that I have violated some sort of secret law and will be investigated by the FBI. Apparently there is some sort of exception to freedom of speech involving the middle name of this presidential candidate.

I did not have to look up any of these names. You probably didn't have to either. These are their names. Barry Obama's name is Barak Hussein Obama. That is the name his parents gave him, and that is his legal name, whether or not those people trying to force his election on us like it or not.

But even if they choose not to use it, there is an inconvenient little amendment to the United States Constitution that says they may not tell me what I may call him and what I may not. So save your violating the Constitution until after he is sworn in.

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Last night at the "Town Hall Debate" in Nashville there was an audience of 300 "undecided" voters. I don't believe it. I doubt if there are three hundred people in the US who have not decided one way or the other. If there is someone who has not made their decision after this the longest election campaign in history with two more clearly delineated candidates, so polar opposite on so many issues, that person should not be allowed to vote. For clearly they will choose at the last minute by throwing a dart or flipping a coin and there is no room in the voting booth for either of those activities.

Monday, October 6, 2008

Mr. Obama, I saw your tax change proposal and found that my wife and I are in the top 10% group and are one of those groups whose taxes will increase. First of all, who would have thought a school teacher and an electrician would be in the top 10%? Must be a lot of people not doing much.

My father always told me "Don't worry if you income makes your taxes go up, your income goes up more."

But, I am a baby boomer. I am one of those thinking "when do I retire?" And my income isn't going up, just my taxes. And I think my life belongs to me, not you. So stand by, Mr. Obama. When you raise my taxes and my paycheck shrinks, be prepared to have to raise them again as I and all those in my cohort shrug. You are right of course that I will have less money, but I will have my time back. It will be all mine - free and clear. So you will have to raise taxes again to make up for our missing revenue, and that will push more of us over the edge to retirement ed infinitum.

And those super rich people that you and your Liberal Democrats want so much to punish (odd because so many Lawyers and Left Coast Hollywood stars are the super rich) will become expatriots, and take their wealth with them to a tax friendlier environment.

Friday, October 3, 2008

There is a problem with having a Representative who almost always votes the way you want. Nobody to pressure, and no one to bitch at. When everyone else was blitzing their Representative with e-mails, phone calls, and faxes, I had to sit on my hands or write other people's reps.

John Linder is my Representative in the House of Representatives in Washington. He voted against the Bail-out both times. He is the author and major proponent of, Heck, he wrote the book on, the Fair Tax.

So, John, Thank you for all you do; and yes, I am flossing*.

* Note: The Honorable John Linder 7th Congressional District of Georgia is not a lawyer, he is a dentist by profession.